The seeds for this trip were planted about 30 years ago the first time I read Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises”.  I became an ardent Hemingway fan and his books have inspired many pilgrimages to places like the dark continent of Africa to the crystal clear waters of the Florida Keys.  For my 50th birthday trip I decided I wanted to fly fish for trout in the Spanish Pyrenees Mountains.  My wife, Gretchen, was not too keen on the idea of a fishing trip so I added to the adventure a horse trekking trip up the Catalonia Coast covering 120 miles through rivers, over mountains and along sandy beaches. 

I booked the fishing trip with Ivan Tarin of Salvelinus Fishing Adventures located in the village of Aren in the Eastern Pyrenees.  The lodge I stayed in was the Ribagorza Lodge and Spa.  This is an Orvis endorsed fishing outfit that has good reviews and a nicely designed website.  Getting to the lodge was a relatively easy affair.  I flew into Barcelona from Atlanta arriving the morning of May 9th.  I took the train from the airport to the Barcelona Sants train station and stayed at the Barcelona Sants Hotel, located in the train station, which was a nice and convenient place to stay.  The next morning I took the train from Barcelona to Lleida which was about an hour ride and I met my guide Aitor at the Lleida train station.

There were some good fishing areas between Lleida and the Village of Aren where the lodge was located.  Lleida was about an hour from Aren and I had arrived in Lleida at about 9:30 a.m.   We headed out to some good tail waters and started fishing.  The scenery was absolutely stunning, beautiful mountains and crystal clear waters, flowers in bloom everywhere.  There were red poppy fields on the banks and yellow wild lilies blooming on the banks.  We started fishing with the 4 weight rod, floating line with a deer hair nymph, number 18 hook with a golden bead head caddis nymph number 18 hook tied as a dropper to the dry with a 5x tippet.  Pretty soon after getting to the tail waters I was catching some nice brook trout on the nymph’s.  The fish were beautiful and fought strong.  After catching several nice brookies and rainbows we waded to a deeper run and Aitor introduced to me to what he called “Spanish Nymphing”.  The way this is done is with a 9 foot rod and two nymphs tied in line with a piece of colored leader between the fly line and the leader.  There was not indicator tied to the line, the object was to “high stick” the rod keeping the colored part of the leader out of the water.  The casts were short roll casts into the deep water of the run.  I started trying this method in the run and ended up hooking the largest trout I had ever hooked on a fly rod.  I would estimate it was at least a 10 pound trout and this was on a 5x tippet and 4 weight rod.  I was ill prepared to fight such a fish; you most definitely cannot “horse” a fish like that in.  I could also tell Aitor was caught off guard as well.  The fish made several runs down stream and made a lot of runs to the bank.  I did manage to fight the fish to my feet a couple of times over the next 15 minutes.  Every time Aitor would try to try to get close with the net he would make another strong run.  Finally we made one last attempt to net the beast and he broke off.  Young Aitor’s hands were shaking after the ordeal.  What I did not know at the time was that this was the largest fish hooked that season and we were not fishing waters that they typically go to for the “trophy” trout so hooking that pig in that spot was quite a surprise.   We continued to fish until about 7pm, then made our way to the lodge were I met Ivan and Juan Antonio.